Labyrinth Legends Review

Labyrinth Legends may be masked in a cartoon-esque art style and cheerful music, but it all changes once you pick up the controller. Legends is a pure dungeon puzzler. With that comes the challenging puzzles, plenty of trial and error, and lots of fun.

Art Straight Out of Cartoon Network

I’m a big fan of games using cel-shading of any sort, simply because it makes the overall experience look much more polished and good-looking for a fraction of the price. This makes it an ideal solution for platforms that struggle to power big titles as well as smaller games made by smaller studios. Fitting into the latter, Creat Studios has carved out a stylistic, if a tad simplistic, art style with Labyrinth Legends. The zombies look cute and the levels feel fresh. With that said, the main character design is atrocious. He looks like a soulless avatar from some no-name browser game.

Fog of War is Your Friend

I usually despise any usage of fog of war. It always feels like a cheap way to prevent me from seeing the inner workings of a game; I just want to see it all, darn it! Interestingly, fog of war is actually one of Labyrinth Legends’ key mechanics and it works very well. Some of the puzzles would be too simple and plain boring if it wasn’t for the element of surprise that the fog of war supplies. In addition, it adds to the atmosphere of lurking through a dangerous dungeon by your lonesome.

Straight to the Slashing

Labyrinth Legends doesn’t mince words, there’s little story and few extras. Instead, it’s focused on puzzle after puzzle. Creat skips the nonsense that people don’t care about and get straight to the meat of the game, gameplay. Gone are the days of loosely tied together stories. In place of it, there are individual dungeons packed with puzzles that the player slowly unlocks as they beat various objectives.

Short and Not So Sweet

The game is short and it feels short. There’s no issue with creating a brief game if it hits all the right notes. The Walking Dead and Journey are both fairly short experiences but they felt complete and worthwhile. Legends may be fun in short bursts, but it definitely feels like too little content to justify the price tag. Adding to the heartbreak, the game has solid enough mechanics that I would’ve gladly continued to play if there were more levels.

Meh Ideas

Try as it might, Labyrinth Legends doesn’t really stand out. In fact, there are many aspects that simply feel generic. While there are attempts to create a refreshing art style, the ideas behind the visuals don’t hold up as well. Skeletons and ogres populate the dark hallways of dungeons. It’s so standard and cliched that I wonder if the puzzles sucked out all creativity from the developers.

While Labyrinth Legends won’t go down as a legendary title, it contains more treasure than skeletons. It’s definitely worth a look for puzzle and dungeon crawler fans alike, but don’t expect any extras lurking in the dark.